(01-24-2018 10:46 PM)ColKurtz Wrote:  

(01-24-2018 09:51 PM)Tom in Lazybrook Wrote:  Actually, they are. Here's a list of school deficits from a few years back. http://sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/finances/

I've actually looked up a couple of school's financial reports that break out revenue and expenses by sport and they appear to match up reasonably well with this study. Many public institutions don't break out athletic revenue and expenses so its hard to validate the numbers for each institution, but for the ones I was able to find the data for, it does appear to match up.

Here's some fun numbers (I think you're from the MAC, right, so I'll use them - The Belt and CUSA are similar...the AAC's public schools actually have higher deficits)

Eastern Michigan - USA Today says 24 million deficit. Mlive says 27 million institutional subsidy. The school doesn't appear to report athletic costs and revenue as a separate line item in their official reports.

Western Michigan - 24 million deficit

Central Michigan - 21 million deficit

Akron - 24 million deficit

Miami (OH) - 23 million deficit

Northern Illinois - 17 million deficit

Toledo - 14 million deficit

Kent - 19 million deficit. I was able to find a NCAA report for them. Looks like the number for 2015 was around 20.8 million of a deficit. http://kentstatesports.com/documents/201...Report.pdf

Ball State - 17 million deficit

Bowling Green - 12 million deficit

Buffalo - 25 million deficit

Ohio - 21 million deficit

You're confusing "total allocation" with deficits in those numbers. Look at Rutgers, for example. It's revenue and expenses are identical. Does that add up to a $28M deficit? WVU's revenue that year was $20M more than expenses, but it's running a $4M deficit?

The "total allocated" in that report, more than anything, is how much each school is soaking its students for athletic fees. It's sort of what the deficit *would* be, if it didn't raise money to cover athletic expenses from student fees from other areas. That's different from actually running a deficit, or losing that money as you described it. Look at Cal... that's a deficit.

The methodology for that USA Today report lays it out.

"The sum of student fees, direct and indirect institutional support and state money allocated to the athletics department, minus certain funds the department transferred back to the school. The transfer amount cannot exceed the sum of student fees and direct institutional support that the department receives from the school. (Under NCAA reporting rules, any additional money transferred to the school cannot be considered part of the department’s annual operating revenues or expenses.)

"The NCAA and others consider student fees, direct and indirect institutional support and state money “allocated,” or everything not generated by the department’s athletics functions."

Either way, its the amount that either the students or the taxpayers are funding the athletic department. Perhaps I should use 'subsidy'. From the standpoint of the taxpayers and students, does it really matter? The only reason there's a subsidy is because without it, there'd be a deficit. Yes, there are a few schools that show a surplus as a net amount after the subsidy, but there appear to be others that show a deficit after it too. Its probably, at best, a wash.

I actually also had a question about whether these numbers made sense. So I went and tried to find some actual athletic department financial statements for a few teams that actually had breakouts of the athletic department budgets. I was able to find Coastal Carolina and Kent State. Most schools simply don't have that information readily available. But they did. And the numbers pretty much matched up. In fact Kent State's numbers were actually worse than the USA Today figure (the school ran a deficit after the subsidy that year). And yes, donations to the athletic department were listed on there as well.

What G5 school is transferring significant funds back to the institution? Why the hell would they do that? Basically charging the students money so they could simply transfer it back to the school? My guess is those would be either negligible amounts or rare years when the athletic department received an unexpected windfall. My guess is that the deficit or surpluses at G5 schools will probably be a wash over a several year period.